Discussion

In a couple of comments threads yesterday, amidst much troll-like behavior, someone complained that we focus too much on Clinton Hill. As another commenter replied, there are a couple of good reasons for that: The neighborhood’s incredible architectural stock and the rapid socioeconomic changes it’s undergoing. The third obvious reason is that it’s where we live so we’re that much more likely to notice a new development site or have someone pass along news to us on the street. That said, we would LOVE to be posting more on-the-ground stuff about other neighborhoods, but the only way that’s going to happen is if readers send us tips and photos. Bottom line: Instead of grousing about how your home turf doesn’t get enough virtual ink, grab the bull by the horns and send story ideas to us at brownstoner@brownstoner.com.
Mr. B

When a post starts to recede into the past, it’s hard for readers to keep up with evolving comment threads. We’re trying to automate a function to flag new comments on older posts, but in the meantime here are some handpicked threads that have seen new comment action recently:
Front Page Forum: Creaky Floorboards [11/16/06]
Head-to-Head in Crown Heights [9/18/06]
After Landmarking, 70 Lefferts Back in Play [1/8/07]
Low Flow? Life’s Too Short For One Reader [1/5/07]
1305 Albemarle: Most Famous Digs? [3/7/06]

One more discussion topic before the year’s out: To date we’ve kept pretty tight reins on the editorial content on the main page of Brownstoner. As the site and community (hopefully) continue to grow, there are numerous initiatives we could be working on aside from just writing posts (events, new service features, etc.). Assuming that our voice remained the dominant one and we kept a careful eye on quality control, how would readers feel about some new perspectives on the main page of the site? For example, do you think the blog would benefit from having some neighborhood and topical specialists writing occasional posts, e.g. a weekly report from a deputized Victorian Flatbush reader? Or do you think such a move would risk diluting what has made the site successful to date? (Remember, there was some grumbling when we ran the Set Speed Condo Report for a few months last year.) Or as a middle ground, maybe there’s just a better way to formalize the process for receiving tips from readers. Either way, we’d like our neighborhood coverage on Brownstoner (and Brooklyn Record) to get broader and deeper, ideally with the help of readers. Very interested to hear everyone’s reaction and ideas.

In discussing the shabby appearance of 1370 Pacific Street for its open house last weekend, a reader posted this question:

Is it better to gussy up a house for a showing or let everyone see it warts and all? All of the crap is going to come out in an inspection, hopefully. Isn’t it more honest to just let it be? I hate viewings where the owner slaps some paint on the wall, and covers the holes in the floor with a rug and a plant. I really hate when high priced brokers have the owner do things like strip painted woodwork in a half assed sloppy way so they can jack up the price. You’re only going to have to redo it anyway, why pay for it twice? I only ask that your home is clean when I come see it, it doesn’t have to be out of the pages of House and Garden. I can do my own decorating. Any thoughts?

Our thoughts? A whole industry now exists around making over properties for sale. It must be adding some value.
Open House Picks Comments [Brownstoner]

Following our rant earlier this month, we were interested to see the article in the Sunday Times business section weighing in on the topic of the deductibility of mortgage interest:

It has long been an article of faith among policymakers that homeownership produces a big beneficial spillover to society at large. In the 1920′s, Herbert Hoover said a family that owned a home had “a more wholesome, healthful and happy atmosphere in which to bring up children.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt said that “a nation of homeowners is unconquerable.” The government’s use of tax incentives to encourage homeownership has a cost, however. The mortgage interest deduction and other subsidies will cost the government roughly $716 billion in lost taxes over the next five years, the president’s tax panel said. And the subsidy distorts incentives to invest, pulling money into housing from other parts of the economy. So, are Americans getting value for their money?

While there seems to be some agreement that home ownership is desirable, there are those that feel that we may be oversubsidizing it and that the subsidy may be having an adverse effect on inner cities where it could be widening the gap between rich and poor.
Buy a Home and Drag Society Down [NY Times]

The most noteworthy point in last weekend’s article on foregoing real estate agents was a parenthetical one about the disincentive that brokers have to hold out for top dollar on a sale:

Note, however, that agents don’t always push for the best price. Steven D. Levitt, co-author of “Freakonomics,” and Chad Syverson, both University of Chicago economists, found that real estate agents have an incentive to persuade their clients to sell their houses too cheaply and too quickly because a few thousand dollars more in price won’t yield them a significantly higher commission.

We completely agree. One way to diminish that tendency would be to have several brokers who want your listing to submit their “bids” for what price they think they can sell it for. Then create a sliding commission scale (with quite a steep rate slope) based on how close they come to achieving that price. This would encourage brokers not to throw out inflated numbers in hopes of winning a listing–and would align their interests better with the seller. Do you think that could work?
The 6 Percent Solution [NY Times]

This being the deadest week of the year save the one between Christmas and New Year’s, we’re going to take the opportunity to start unpacking after our move last week. As a result, all we’re going to serve up this week are the morning links to give you something to chew on. That, and one discussion question.

As we start to approach our one-year anniversary in October, we think it would be a good time to solicit feedback about the site. We’re happy to hear any criticism as long as it’s given in a respectful tone, so please let us know what you like about Brownstoner and what you don’t as well as ideas for new features or services you’d like to see in the months ahead.

Thanks,

Brownstoner

On the same day last week, we heard in the morning from a policeman that the 88th Precinct (Fort Greene and Clinton Hill) had finally gotten a boost in manpower and in the afternoon that our neighbor across the street had been robbed the night before. We’re wondering what people think about the idea of supplementing the local police force with some private security. Our GC told us he thinks the local “bad guys” won’t be put off by rent-a-cops. Other people have said that bringing in private security would only antagonize relations between gentrifiers and old-timers. We’re sure other people’s response will be “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” But if you’ve already committed to being in a neighborhood, should political correctness stop you from doing everything you can to ensure the safety of your family? Is passing the hat to your neighbors to raise money for a night-time patrol realistic?

We’re on vacation this week, so you’ll have to get by on Brownstoner Lite this week. To help amuse yourselves, we’re going to throw out a discussion topic every day. Have fun.

Question: In a shocking turn of events last week, a reader stood up and identified himself as, gasp, a flipper and proud of it. Which raises the question of why the term flipper has acquired such negative connotations. The argument could be made that they are either 1) arbitrageurs or 2) home improvers. We suspect that it’s because people are 1) jealous if the flipper made a bundle of money for doing nothing or 2) resentful because the flipper did a crappy, corner-cutting renovation. How do you feel about flippers?

A couple is trying to evict all of the tenants in the 15-unit rent-control building at 47-49 East Third Street in the East Village under a loop hole in rent laws that allows for such evictions in the case that the owner plans to use the space for himself. According to this article, the claim has to pass the “giggle” test, i.e. the landlord must prove his good faith intention to live in apartments he is seeking to evict the tenants from. While hard stats are hard to come by, one lawyer who specializes in these cases estimates that landlords were on the losing end only a quarter of the time. In the rest of the cases, tenants were forced out after receiving a low 5-figure settlement.

It’s hard to take this family’s claim that they need 11,200 square feet to themselves seriously, but as the real estate market has heated up, the number of these types of cases has been increasing for obvious reasons. And while it’s impossible not to empathize with those being displaced, ultimately we think the problem lies with the rent control law itself, an economically unsound social policy that raises the overall cost of housing in this city. We have no problem with the decision as a society to subsidize the housing costs of certain portions of the population–the elderly, handicapped, etc.–in fact, we support it in such clear-cut cases. But rather than forcing individual landlords to absorb that cost on a random basis, we think market rates should be allowed to prevail and the government should give the members of the subsidized population direct payments to help pay their market rents (or pay the landlords directly). That would avoid situations like a friend we know who inherited his family’s rent control 10-room Park Avenue apartment that he still pays less than $2,000 a month for and do a better job of making sure the subsidies get to the right people. The current system is fraught with inefficiencies and invites the kind of corner-cutting on display in this article. That’s what we think, anyway.
Everybody Out? [NY Times]

When you are standing on the elevated platform on the Brooklyn-bound side of the Marcy Avenue stop, you are at about eye-level with the top floor of the four-story buildings that line Broadway. This provides an unusually close view of the cornices, some of which are quite interesting. This one in particular caught our eye because the fact that it is made of wood is so glaringly obvious. This got us thinking about what cornices were made out of over the years. We’re hoping there are some architectural history buffs out there who know something about what cornices were constructed of over different periods. This is of particular interest to us because our house is missing its cornice, so at some point in the near future we’ll want to get a replacement made.

This article repeats a thesis we’ve heard a lot recently: The market’s alleged slowdown is a healthy return to normalcy, a healthy, stabilizing trend that is occurring in lieu of a dramatic bursting of the bubble :

“It’s been an overheated market for so long that it is a slowdown, but this slowdown is kind of like what we used to have all the time, which is a normal market,” said Deanna Kory, a senior vice president at the Corcoran Group

We don’t get the sense that the market it slowing down much at all–at least in Brownstone Brooklyn. (We can’t speak to whether the public’s appetite for $1.5 million postwar three-bedrooms on the Upper East Side is waning.) We think all that may be happening is that seller’s having just gotten out of hand in their asking prices, so that we may be seeing more instances of listings selling below ask. If the foot traffic we saw at 41 Monroe Street yesterday is any indication, there are still plenty of people hungrily trying to find a place to call their own. Of course, we may be a little nonchalant simply because we’re not planning to sell any time in the near future. How about those buyers who are actively in the market for a brownstone? Are you still encountering multiple-party bidding wars and feeding frenzies around well-priced deals? We expect so.

As for the statistic above, as much as we like Professor Shiller’s work in general (we interviewed him a decade ago in a previous professional incarnation), we don’t give it much weight. We may well be in for rude end to the party for a lot of reasons, but we doubt that the number of times that bandwagon journalists have used the term is a particularly good indicator of the impending doom.

Signs of a Spring Slowdown [NY Times]

In the Comments section of yesterday’s post on the alleged cracks in the real estate market, the discussion drifted towards the topic of exclusives and whether they make sense from a seller’s perspective. We know the argument that you’ll hear from brokers: That the seller will get better attention and more consistent service from a broker who knows he/she will ultimately get paid. The danger is that a broker promises the moon in terms of price to get the listing and then the property takes forever to sell. When we sold our first apartment in 1997, we did it ourselves but let brokers bring clients. When we were selling our second apartment in 1999, we gave an exclusive to a broker at Douglas Elliman and had a fairly positive experience. What do people think about this? It would be interesting to hear from both brokers and owners on this, so please identify which you are.

Writing in last Thursday’s NY Times, Brent Staples chronicles his ten-year effort to cultivate a passable grass lawn in the back yard of his Brooklyn townhouse. Ultimately, he cries uncle and builds a brick patio. “When I first moved to the neighborhood I was aghast at how many people had given up on grass and paved their yards right over,” he writes. “After a decade of heartbreak, I, too, have taken the path of least resistance. Grass, I have learned, is the cruelest crop of all.” What kind of luck have other brownstone owners out there had? This is particularly relevant to us, as we will be planning our garden this autumn.
Grass is for Experts, Don’t Try It At Home [NY Times]

If you buy into the subscription-only (argghhh!) article by Julie Satow in yesterday’s NY Sun, cracks are starting to appear in the facade of New York real estate. According to Corcoran broker Carrie Chiang, “There is an overall slowdown in the market. People aren’t rushing into buying something like they did a year ago.” As noted on Curbed, the prose in Douglas Elliman’s most recent missive is notably down-to-earth and lacking in the kind of promotional hucksterism we’ve come to expect from brokers: “Certain asking prices have become excessive, and need to be adjusted: Properties priced within the realm of reason will continue to sell. Un-explainable escalations that we’ve experienced over the past 6 months must cool off sooner or later, and a more normal market could come as a welcome relief for all.” This is all fine and dandy, but we haven’t heard of any props in Brooklyn selling below ask recently. Can anyone offer up any concrete examples of recent sales that suggest a softening market?
Excerpts from the article after the jump…
Bubblewatch: April Showers Bring May Showers [Curbed]
Real Estate Market Finally Cooling Off [NY Sun]
Luxury Letter: May 2005 [luxuryloft.com] (more…)

As many of you will no doubt recognize, these “modern” brownstones are on Cumberland and Fulton in Fort Greene. Whenever we drive by, we always think to ourselves, “Hmmm, those aren’t so bad.” We don’t know much about them–when they were built, by whom, under what program–but think they are a reasonable effort at fitting in with their environment, especially since they were probably built as part of some government-funded program. What do other people think? Are there better examples of “new build” townhouses out there we should take a look at?

NY Times, April 21, 2005 — The Consumer Price Index in the New York City area rose 1.7 percent last month, the largest month-over-month increase in 23 years, the federal Department of Labor said yesterday. The increase, which was far higher than the rise of inflation nationally, was driven largely by the sharply rising real estate sales and rental markets as well as higher prices for clothing, travel and mass transit. “People are continuing to move to the city,” said Michael L. Dolfman, regional commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which oversees the index, a measure of consumer spending for a variety of goods and services. “There is a limited supply of apartments, so this a story of supply and demand again.” Over all, housing costs, which include purchase prices, rose 6.5 percent in March over the same month last year, and are up 3.2 percent in the year to date.
Real Estate Drives Up Consumer Prices in Region [NY Times]

Blogger Transfer calls developer United Homes of New York on its unforgiveable constructions. It comes as no surprise that these homes are getting built by and large in poorer neighborhoods. As Transfer writes, “Substandard design, materials, and expectations… Just what the ghetto needs, right?” A commenter adds: “Piece of shit developers like United Homes are just consigning these neighborhoods to another 25 years of low-value stagnation.” All this begs the question: Does cheap have to mean ugly? We don’t think so, though it certainly requires more effort and creativity than most run-of-the-mill developers have. All the more reason for some kind of aesthetic oversight a la Landmarks in our opinion.
Substandard Architecture [Transfer]